2:57 PM
Jalal HB
Attackers have been holding an unknown number of hostages at the Westgate Mall overnight, after yesterday attacking shoppers with guns and grenades, the Kenyan Authorities said.
In the meantime, Somali-based militant group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the outrage at the mall in the affluent Westlands district of the capital, which is popular with expats.
The group claimed responsibility for the atrocity, writing on its official Twitter feed that ‘the Mujahideen entered Westgate Mall’ at around noon local time yesterday.
It said it had previously warned the Kenyan government that, if they did not remove military forces from Somalia, there would be ‘severe consequences’.
Scores of foreigners including the British, American and Canadian nationals besides others are said to have been trapped in the crossfire between the police and the militants.
‘For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now it's time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land,’ it tweeted.It added that they were ‘still inside the mall, fighting the Kenyan kuffar inside their own turf’ before the account was suspended by Twitter. The organisation claimed it had killed more than 100 Kenyan ‘kuffar’, a derogatory term used to describe non-Muslims.The gunmen wore white bandanas, said an eye witness, and appeared to work in teams, each taking control of a different floor of the five-storey building. He also said officials had confirmed to him that the attacker they arrested was a Kenyan Muslim convert.
Scores of foreigners including the British, American and Canadian nationals besides others are said to have been trapped in the crossfire between the police and the militants.
